Last Blog Post Until 2017

Another year has nearly come and gone, and so goes the previous twelve months of blogging. After nearly giving up my baseball blog at the end of last year, I decided to continue it into this year, but am leaning towards making early 2017 as the expiration date for my blog.

No matter what I decide, though, this will definitely be my final blog post until next year arrives in 9 days. With Christmas time upon us, I don’t want to have to worry about hoping on here to post a blog entry every fifth day, and therefore will be holding off until the new year.

When 2017 does arrive, the first day of the year will see some sort of post, but I haven’t decided what it will be about yet. Normally, I write about the goals I have for the coming blogging year, but with me not guaranteeing that I’ll see the entire year through, I’m not sure what it will be about yet.

Regardless, after that will come my unofficial Hall of Fame vote, with the official election results being written about in a post when things are announced on January 18th. It should be interesting to see who gets inducted with such a strong class this year.

January 20th will mark the sixth year of my blog, and that’s the make-or-break point for the entire year. I’ll either decided to make that my final post ever or I will continue on for as long as I can. It has yet to be determined.

Should I decide to keep going, I’ll likely post another entry towards the end of the month regarding the release of the 2017 Top 100 Prospects list by MLB.com. I always find it interesting to talk about and review, and will be sure to write about it if I’m still going.

But no matter what I decide to do beyond January 20th, the first three weeks will be fairly straightforward blogging, assuming no big baseball news takes place.

Until then, Merry Christmas, and best wishes for a Happy New Year.

I’ll be back in 2017 (at least for a short while).

Blogging Resolutions for 2015

Happy New Year, everyone!

As I’ve done for the past few years, I wanted to take the time to go over the main things I’m hoping to accomplish, blogging wise, throughout the coming year. Some of them are the same as my 2014 goals, but a few of them have been altered a bit.

The five main resolutions/goals I have for this blog in 2015 are as follows:

1. Blog at least once every 5 days:

Last year my goal was to blog at least once every four days. I was able to accomplish that goal, but not without a great deal of work. There were a few times that there was simply nothing to write about, and I had to basically make things up as I went along due to it being the fourth day and not wanting to break my goal. It was very stressful at times. And therefore, while I’m not saying I won’t be able to get a post up every four days or less in 2015, I’m adding one more day to my maximum gap in entries to give myself a little slack — just in case.

2. Post 100+ blog entries:

Because I’m adding a day to my goal of number of days between entries, naturally the number of blog posts I publish this year will decrease. In 2014, while blogging at a breakneck pace at times, I was able to put together 128 blog posts — the most in a single year in the history of this blog. I’m going to be a lot busier this year for several reasons, and thus I had to keep close to my 2014 goal of blogging 100 times. My only other option was to give up blogging altogether. But I didn’t want to do that; at least not yet.

3. Get more views than 2014:

Every year of this blogs existence, I’ve recorded more views in each year following the previous one. With that said, I’d love to keep that going in 2015. While I’ll be blogging a little less than I did in 2014, I really hope to get more views than I did last year. Even one more total blog visit would make me happy. Having accumulated just over 80,000 views in 2014 — around 3,000 more than 2014 — I would really be astounded if I could get to a nice round number of 100,000 blog views for 2015. But if I could get to even 81,000 visits between now and December 31st, I would consider this blogging year a success.

4. Go on a 3-post-blogging-streak:

In 2014, this goal was a five-post-blogging-streak. But just like some of the previous goals, I’m changing this one a bit to go a little more conservative for 2015. Last year I was able to get up five blog posts on five consecutive days, but it was difficult. It started with my post on the MLB award frontrunners at the All-Star break, on July 14, and continued through the entry I posted on the second half of the MLB season setting up to be exciting, on July 18th. Even though I did that five post run, I’m only shooting for three this year. Easier, but still not extremely easy.

5. Reply to every comment that is left:

This is one of the two goals from 2014 that stayed exactly the same. The reason for that is it’s very easy to accomplish, as it takes less than a minute (usually) to answer a comment. I don’t get too many comments left on my blog, but when I do I want to always make sure I reply to them. Whether the comment is a question, about something I’m up to or the post itself, or a general comment or statement, I feel the obligation to reply back. Without the readers this blog wouldn’t be what it is. Replying is my way of saying that the reader is appreciated.

So, there you have it. My top five blogging resolutions/goals for 2015.

As I stated last year — a recurring theme in this blog post — I hope to make this my best year of blogging yet. If I can accomplish what I want to (and plan to), I feel it truly will be. That’s always the overall goal, to get better and better. I think 2015 is going to be an exciting year.

Blogging Resolutions for 2014

Happy New Year, everyone!

As I did last year, I want to go over the main things I’m hoping to accomplish, blogging wise, this year. But unlike last year, this time around I’m making a couple of my goals a little more realistic.

The five main resolutions/goals I have for this blog in 2014 are as follows:

1. Blog at least once every 4 days:

I was able to accomplish this last year — with the exception of July/August when I was on vacation — and I don’t see any reason why I won’t be able to keep up the same pace this year. Although I had periods where I got up a post every 1-3 days, I feel four is a good number. Anything more would be too long to wait between posts, and anything less would make it too difficult for me to keep up. (I still want to have time to do other things, non baseball related. Imagine that.)

2. Publish 100 posts:

I was able to get 121 posts up in 2013, so I feel confident I’ll be able to do so again this year. But despite my optimism, I don’t want to increase my goal number of 100. Though I’ll probably exceed it, 100 is a nice round number (only 99 more to go). I guess a good goal would be to beat the 121 number in 2014, but we’ll see what happens.

3. Get more views than 2013:

Last year, this goal was to get 100,000 views. Considering the fact that I only amassed just under 76,000 views in 2013 (23,000 better than the previous year), I’m not shooting as high this season. Would 100,000+ views be nice? Yes, absolutely. I’m just not counting on it, and therefore my goal is to get more views this year than I did in 2013. That’s what I’m aiming for anyway — to get better and better every year. And more views is a part of that.

4. Go on a 5-post-blogging-streak:

Just like goal number three, I changed this goal for 2014. In 2013, my goal was to get more views in a single day (892) than I ever had. But that’s out of my control, so I don’t feel the need to keep that as a goal for 2014. Therefore, I’m changing that goal to having at least one streak during the year of publishing five or more posts in a row, day after day. I’ve never done that many, so it will be a challenging goal, but I’m going to do my best to tackle it.

5. Reply to every comment that is left:

This, as I stated last year, is the easiest goal of them all. But even so, I wanted to keep this as a goal, as I feel it’s a very important one — maybe the most important of them all. It may not seem that way, but although I don’t receive a tremendous amount of comments, anytime I do I want to reply back. Whether the comment is a question, about something I’m up to or the post itself, or a general comment or statement, I feel the obligation to reply back. Without the readers this blog wouldn’t be what it is. Replying is my way of saying that the reader is appreciated.

So, there you have it. My top five blogging resolutions/goals for 2014.

As I stated last year — a recurring theme in this blog post — I hope to make this my best year of blogging yet. If I can accomplish what I want to (and plan to), I feel it truly will be. That’s always the overall goal. I think 2014 is going to be an exciting year.